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Burn rate is how fast a business consumes cash; runway is how long it can continue before running out. Together they are the most important numbers in any business that is not yet profitable. Gross
Methods of spreading the cost of a long-lived asset across the periods it is used, rather than charging the whole cost in the year it was bought. Why it exists. A van bought for £30,000 and used for
When a transaction is recorded. Cash accounting records it when money moves; accrual accounting records it when the economic event happens, regardless of payment. Cash basis. Income is recorded when
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. It strips four things out of profit to give a figure intended to show operating performance independent of financing and accounting
Working out how much you need to sell to cover your costs — the point at which the business stops losing money, before it makes any. The two cost types it depends on: Fixed costs do not change with
Gross margin tells you whether the product makes money. Net margin tells you whether the business does. They answer different questions and are frequently confused when people quote "margin". Gross
Working capital is the money tied up in running the business day to day — current assets minus current liabilities. It matters because it is where cash goes to hide. What is in it: Stock (inventory)
Each answers a different question, and reading any one alone gives a misleading picture — which is exactly why there are three. The profit and loss account (income statement). Did we make money over
They measure three different things, and a business can be strong on one while failing on another — which is why profitable companies go bust. Revenue (turnover). The total value of sales in a
By checking the recorded mileage history against the odometer and against the vehicle's physical condition — and mileage adjustment is easier than it has ever been, because digital odometers are
By checking the vehicle identification number against the manufacturer's and the regulator's records — and it is worth doing, because recalls are frequently unactioned on used vehicles that have
A warranty covers failures; a service plan covers scheduled maintenance. They are frequently sold together and cover entirely different things, and confusing them leads to expensive surprises.
Owing more on the finance agreement than the car is worth — which happens easily, is entirely normal early in an agreement, and becomes a problem only when you need to change the car. Why it occurs.
Whether you end up owning the car, and what you are actually paying for during the agreement — three arrangements that look similar as a monthly figure and differ fundamentally. Hire purchase (HP).
A rating from 1 to 50 indicating how expensive a vehicle is expected to be to insure — assigned by an industry body and used by insurers as one input among many, rather than as the price itself. Who
A defined area where vehicles failing an emissions standard are charged or restricted — and compliance depends on the vehicle's emissions standard, not on its age, fuel or how it looks. The standards
By a system that has changed several times, so the rate depends on when the vehicle was first registered — which is why two apparently similar cars can cost very different amounts, and why advice
Through a DVLA process attaching a registration to a vehicle — and the key concept is the retention document, which lets you hold a registration without a vehicle while you buy or sell. The two
No — and this is the single most important thing to understand about the document, because it is routinely misunderstood in ways that cost people money. What the V5C is. The vehicle registration
Because the entire ecosystem of automotive electrical components runs on 12 volts, and the high-voltage traction battery is deliberately disconnected whenever the car is not in use. What the 12V
Three graded measures plus a snow and ice marking — and the first of them affects your fuel consumption every mile you drive, which few buyers realise. Fuel efficiency (rolling resistance). Graded A
They are driver assistance systems, not automation — they help within narrow conditions and expect you to be driving throughout, and the gap between what they do and what people assume they do is
Because aerodynamic drag rises with the square of speed, and the power needed to overcome it rises with the cube — so going faster costs far more than the speed difference suggests. The arithmetic.
Brake fade is a loss of braking effectiveness from heat — the pedal may still feel firm, but the car does not slow as it should. It is the reason repeated hard braking on a long descent is dangerous
Relay theft exploits the fact that a keyless entry system only checks whether the key is nearby — and thieves can make the car believe it is, by extending the signal. How keyless entry works. The car
Nose weight is the downward force the trailer's coupling applies to the towball — and getting it right is the single most important factor in whether a trailer tows stably or begins to snake. Why it
Three different figures that get used interchangeably and are not interchangeable at all — and getting them wrong is how people end up driving overloaded, which is an offence. Kerb weight. The weight
The spring carries the weight, the damper controls how the spring moves, and the anti-roll bar connects the two sides. Three separate jobs, constantly confused — particularly the damper, which almost
It lets the driven wheels turn at different speeds while both still receive power — which is necessary because when a car turns, the outer wheel travels further than the inner one. The problem it
Introversion is about energy; shyness is about fear. They are frequently treated as the same thing, and they are not — you can be one without the other, and confusing them leads people to the wrong
No — and the distinction is the whole subject. Solitude is being alone; loneliness is the distressing feeling that your social relationships are inadequate. You can be lonely in a crowd and contented
Because they are competing for genuinely limited resources, in a relationship they cannot exit, with someone they must share an environment with indefinitely — a combination that would produce
Because asking involves several distinct costs at once — and because people are systematically wrong about how others will respond, in a direction that has been measured repeatedly. The costs of
Considerably more common than its near-total absence from ordinary conversation suggests — which is itself the most important fact about it. The prevalence. Surveys across several countries have
Yes — and the reason is that its purpose is almost entirely social rather than informational, which is exactly why people who evaluate it on content find it pointless. What small talk is doing:
No — and the gap between how much you think you are being observed and how much you actually are has been measured repeatedly. It is called the spotlight effect. The original experiment. Thomas
Small attempts to get another person's attention, affection or engagement — and how they are responded to predicts relationship outcomes better than almost anything else that can be observed. What a
Because of who they are to you, what you have told them, and the fact that you cannot walk away from the relationship afterwards — three things that combine to make the same words land far harder.
They describe three different responses to someone else's suffering, and the differences matter because they lead to quite different behaviour — and because one of them burns people out. Sympathy.
Vitamins are organic compounds made by living things; minerals are chemical elements that come from soil and water. Both are needed in small amounts, and both can be harmful in excess — though not
Heart rate variability (HRV) is the variation in time between consecutive heartbeats — and counterintuitively, more variation is generally better, because it reflects a nervous system responding
NEAT — non-exercise activity thermogenesis — is the energy you spend on everything that is not sleeping, eating or deliberate exercise: walking, fidgeting, standing, gesturing, climbing stairs,
Bone is living tissue that responds to load — it adds material where it is stressed and loses it where it is not, which makes the right kind of exercise one of the few things that genuinely builds
Planning training in structured phases with different goals, rather than doing the same thing indefinitely — the recognition that you cannot push hard in every direction all the time. The underlying
Because it is the part of food your body cannot digest, and almost everything useful about it follows from that — including feeding the bacteria that can. What it is. Plant carbohydrates that resist
Far less strictly — and the difference is fundamental: a medicine must prove it works before sale; a supplement does not. Medicines. Require a marketing authorisation from a regulator. The
The glycaemic index (GI) ranks carbohydrate-containing foods by how quickly and how much they raise blood glucose, compared with a reference — usually pure glucose at 100. How it is measured.
Macronutrients — protein, carbohydrate and fat — are the three components of food that provide energy. "Tracking macros" means recording how much of each you eat rather than only total calories. What
No — the label is a reasonable estimate, not a measurement of what you absorb, and several factors mean the number on the packet and the energy your body extracts differ. How labels are calculated.
A following feed shows content from accounts you chose. A for you feed shows content the platform predicts you will engage with, mostly from accounts you have never heard of. The difference is who